To open the session, three extraordinary women from the organization People’s Action for People in Need (PAPN) based in Sirmour District Himachal Pradesh, provided an insight into some critical issues affecting women and marginalized communities in the region. Sumitra from PAPN spoke of how the division of resources along class, caste and gender lines. The government is allotting land to the ‘original owners’, but it recognizes only those who owned land before 1950, and these are comprised mostly of rich, upper caste men. The poor and Dalits are completely excluded. Even the compensation received by families in lieu of land acquisition for power projects, names only men as ‘owners’ even though it is women who tend to land. Women’s ownership of property is practically nil even though 80% of work in the fields is done by women. Other issues like child marriage, trafficking and poor educational opportunities for women are also prevalent in the region.

After providing this background, Sumitra introduced two women from the community who have been organizing others to respond to some of these challenges that women face. The first of these is Sunita Thakur who created a collective of women to have an alcohol shop demolished. Sunita explained that men were spending all the money that they earned on alcohol and not providing for household expenses. Therefore the women came together and against men’s opposition, led a non-violent andolan to catch the attention of the SDM and panchayat members. They took a petition to the SDM but when they were not entertained, they held a 5 hour chakka jam which forced the panchayat to take action. A resolution was passed by the panchayat to have the alcohol theka removed. In fact, now women’s permission is required before any additional theka is put up. Sunita highlighted that there were some men who supported them in their struggle, but the entire protest was led by women. Another woman from the community, a panchayat pradhan explained how in her village, they had raised awareness among women that they too can take work under MNREGA. Earlier women believed that this scheme was only for men, but after a lot of awareness-raising, women started taking work under the scheme. She said that this has led to economic empowerment and women are now able to stand up to their husband and say that ‘now I am also earning money’. She emphasized that she is also taking efforts to ensure that women participate in gram panchayats. In the past, women would not be allowed to come for panchayats, but now there is awareness and they also table their problems in the panchayat.After the inspiring narratives of the sisters from Himachal, the session moved on to the panel speakers. Bijayalaxmi Nanda, head of the WDC in Miranda House introduced the three speakers.Gender and Climate ChangeAditi Kapoor, journalist with two decades of experience in evidence based advocacy and research, works on integrating gender in the state level climate action plans. She is also co-founder of Alternative Futures, a development research and communication group.Linkages between gender and climate change: Aditi Kapoor outlined the many facets and inter-linkages between gender and climate change. To begin with, she stated that the burden of the impact climate change (lack of water, failing crops, access to resources and so on) is being borne disproportionately by women. Women have many more responsibilities both in terms of fetching water, fuel and so on, but also cultural responsibilities - decoration, religious requirements, procuring spices for cooking, personal enhancement and so on. In terms of assets and access to resources, women have none. But men have land, livestock, (IAY houses are also on joint name, not women’s), knowledge, credit and a health body! Women eat last, and eat the least nutrition food, they bear the burden of reproductive health and don’t seek health care when required. When there is food scarcity, women are affected most. When there is no water, men migrate but women cannot leave and they are left to deal with fending for the families, tilling the land, doing hard labour and so on. When money is less, they are left to take debts – mortgage their limited assets, jewellery and so on. Moreover, even the solutions that have been offered to mitigate the impacts of climate change unfairly burden women. Some kinds of Adaptive agricultural interventions (such as organic/NPM agriculture to restore soil fertility and retain soil moisture), require even long hours of work by women. ​Gaps in Policy: Despite these close interlinkages between gender and climate change, Aditi pointed out that National Climate Action plan has only one para recognizes women’s vulnerability, but suggests nothing to address it. This gender blindness is translated into state action plans as well, which lack any analysis of the differential impacts of climate change on women and their differential capacities in dealing with them. The entire approach is techno-managerial and there is no scope for bottoms up learning from practice. Vulnerable studies only focus on physical natural resources, not on users and social stratification of the users. Structural essentials are missing – women’s strategic roles in decision making, participation at different fora, ownership and control of resources.Policy barriers: This gender blindness stems in part from the government’s lack of capacity to appreciate gender, the low status of nodal departments. There is no capacity building/exposure on gender or climate change to government authorities. Further, there is no gender based natural resources policy and no gender-based disaster policy at all. Moreover, women related departments, plans, policies unconcerned with climate change impacts. Gender mainstreaming in climate change is a tall order.Aditi also spoke about some efforts that her organization has taken to include gender in climate plans and governance structures. The policy ask is to include gender components in state climate plans, training of elected women panchayat leaders, inclusion of climate risks in gender empowerment policies. The successes of this work have been that now gender components are a must for all state climate plans. There is a training manual for women panchayat leaders and capacities built for over 150 PRI women in Bihar with PRI and agriculture department.To conclude, Aditi emphasized that policy makers need to recognize that the loss/damage to women due to climate change is disproportionately greater and some adaptive interventions also require more investment of women’s time. Thus climate action plans must be made with a gender lens. In order to address climate change impact with a gender perspective, it is important to address some important underlying issues especially inequality in assets – land rights lease, livestock, forest/water rights for women must be realized. In terms of knowledge and skills, women must have access to technology to lessen labour, and should also be able to use of their knowledge especially because traditional knowledge is also what experts are recommending. Finally, even if women have knowledge, they cannot take decisions at home ( what crops/seeds/livestock, what government scheme to access, what livelihood option to choose, to migrate or not? ) and so women’s decision making needs to be strengthened.Women Engaged in Sanitation Work Sanghamitra Acharya, CSMCH, JNU, in her presentation highlighted the collective impact of gender and caste on Dalit women, by reflecting on the condition of women engaged in sanitation work. She began by presenting data on the poor status of women in India, in terms of education, work and political participation. Apart from the fact that women do not get opportunities, she stressed on the problem of women’s socialization into gendered roles. It is telling that in terms of decision making, only one in four women participate in every decisions related to their own health care, purchases of large household goods, visit family and relatives, purchase items of daily use. There is also an urban rural divide in this regard – women who have spent more than 10 yrs in education, and are urban are more likely to participate in decision making. Son preference is also expressed by women themselves, due in part to the pressures that they face. Data shows that women with two daughters are more likely to want a third child than women with two sons. Even when it comes to violence, more than 50% of women themselves justify wife beating for reasons such as disrespect for in laws or neglect of house work or children. ​Within this discriminated group, there are Dalit women. Almost half of India’s 160 million dalits are women. They comprise 16% of India’s total female population, and 8% of the total population. This significantly large group are isolated on various axes – economic, religious, political and ideological. Violence on Dalit women takes various forms but only 1% of cases end in conviction. The proportion of those in the lowest wealth quintile among Dalits is high (28%), second only to STs (50%), and proportion of highest quintile, is greatest in those from ‘other’ castes. Similarly, women exposure to media is much lesser among Dalits than other groups (except tribals). Thus Dalit women face a double burden – that of being dalit and women. They feel disconnected from the mainstream women’s movements, as very often, women academicians and forerunners of the gender cause consider women as a one homogenous group as far as the issues related to women are concerned. At the most disparities are superfluously addressed by way of socioeconomic hierarchies.The case of women sanitation workers amply illustrates the impact of this burden on women. In India, sanitation workers are exclusively dalit. It is worth noting that sanitation is a priority development issue both in India as well as internationally. However, the thrust is on coverage of toilets. There is recognition of inequity in access to toilets between slum, non-slum, urban, rural and so on, but those who lend their lives for safe disposal are not within the purview of the MDGs or the Swacchh Bharat Abhiyan. This is work which is neatly linked to caste; if that wasn’t the case, only Dalits would not be doing it. The impact of the work on women is staggering, and much of it is linked to the poor working conditions. In contrast to other developed and even developing countries, India provides barely any precautionary measures for sanitation workers. The safety kit provided is inadequate and unwieldy. To add to this, the remuneration is a pittance. Yet, this important issue of who cleans India is lost in the Swacchh Bharat Abhiyan. On the one hand there is a lot of emphasis on picking up after oneself. We have seen photo ops of dignitaries sweeping the floors. But data does not really reflect this. The reality is that work is being done by a particular community, and mostly by women. In a digital India, we are talking of smart cities – but who is building these cities, what about smart sewers and smart drainage. Even though manual scavenging is banned by law, it continues and the people who do this work are not provided any safety.